CHAPTER XI
AN AMERICAN MERCHANT MARINE
There can be no more imperative duty than that immediately after the present war the American Government shall, cost what it may, speedily revive its merchant marine. Once the acknowledged mistress of the seas, America is now bound hand and foot by the great foreign ship-owning powers of the world. It is thus rendered helpless in war, and placed in times of peace at unnecessary disadvantage. Even the Government mails and the private despatches are wholly at the mercy of foreigners, as America has no fast mail-ships of its own. Almost every ton of freight produced in America pays rich tolls to aliens and is covered in transit by strange flags. American merchants are thus placed by a government policy, as wrong as impolitic, at the mercy of foreign ship-owners, while Americans citizens are humiliated by being forced to seek passage on foreign vessels even when approaching or quitting their own shores. And yet America claims to be one of the richest and most advanced countries of the world. Why is it that its sea-borne commerce is deliberately handed over to foreigners, its defensive warfare allowed to be paralyzed, and its citizens driven from the gainful occupation of the seas? A government policy which suffers these things is as incompetent as it is unwise. Until this particular wrong to American citizens is remedied, America cannot be reckoned among the great and formidable powers of the world. Any of the great foreign governments may at will interdict or impede American trade. This the American Government can prevent only by the reëstablishment of its once prosperous merchant marine.
In the early days of the republic the merchant marine and the foreign commerce of America were sedulously and intelligently protected and fostered by the American Government. The deep-sea fisheries, those nurseries of the navy, were until 1866 encouraged by special bounties. The result of this protection was that America gained the War of 1812 on the seas, although the victory was waived by the Treaty of Ghent, which in effect repealed the laws favorable to the American merchant marine. Had it not been for the Federal statute of 1817, still in force, which closed coast-wise commerce to foreigners, America to-day would have barely a ship left on the high seas. Between the years 1830 and 1838 the American merchant marine somewhat flourished because American wooden ships could be built more cheaply and American mariners were acknowledged to be the most skilful afloat. But with the coming of steam power and iron and steel ships all this natural advantage was lost. In 1858, when it was proposed to remedy the condition, the Southern slave-owners began openly to play into the hands of the foreign shipmasters and to oppose any governmental encouragement necessary to enable American ship-masters to compete with the cheaper-manned and -built foreign ships. This Southern opposition is now thought by well-informed men to have been the first move of the Secessionist party in the United States. In President Cleveland's administration, to which the modern American Navy owes so much, it was made evident that something must be done to restore the American merchant marine. Accordingly the act of 1845, authorizing the Federal Government to contract for carrying the mails on American ships, was substantially reënacted in 1891; but unfortunately the act of 1891 did not offer sufficient encouragement to American shipmasters. In 1912, foreign-built ships at last became entitled, after a long opposition, to American registry, but the higher American operating scale frustrated also this law. The tariff bill of 1913 was on sound principles. It gave a five per cent, discount of duties on merchandise imported in American bottoms; but the act was rendered futile by the favored-nation clauses in all American treaties. It is intimated that Congress realized this when the law was enacted and that it was intended to be inoperative.
When the present war broke out in 1914 the shocking condition of the American merchant marine was brought forcibly home to Americans. All the foreign commerce immediately retired from America, and America had virtually no ships of its own. It was then proposed by patriotic Americans to buy all the foreign ships in sight, but this "dollar project" was immediately frustrated by foreign nations as well as by principles of the international laws of war. Withal, the war would have quickly revived shipbuilding and American shipping had it not been for the enactment of the "La Follette- Alexander Bill,"one of the worst pieces of demagogic class legislation the world has ever beheld. This measure enabled American sailors to desert at will, while it prevented replacing them with such sailors as are freely employed by both English and French ship-masters. By the enactment of useless and unwise details the bill made the operating cost of American ships so excessively dear that no freights whatever could be earned by American-owned vessels. The La Follette-Alexander Bill should have been entitled "a bill for driving American ships off the high seas." Passed on November 4, 1914, this iniquitous law has rapidly driven the remnant of American commerce off the seas. It handed over the Pacific commerce to Japan. A more wicked and a more unpatriotic measure than the La Follette-Alexander Bill has never been enacted by Congress. It is obvious that, unless this sort of legislation is soon put a stop to, Congress ought to give place to a more efficient kind of legislature. The Americans are a patient people, but they are impatient in the end when reform is necessary. If necessary, they will reform Congress or any other governmental organ which stands persistently in the way of national progress. Possibly it cannot be said with accuracy that the neglect of the American merchant marine is the result of deliberate treachery to American institutions. That it is a manifestation of a certain sort of inept demagogy which often produces in popular governments very bad results for the time being is, however, evident.
To employ a euphemism, the worst has not been said concerning this "mistaken policy" of the American Congress. In time of war a great merchant marine is indispensable to many successful military operations. Without the aid of merchant shipping battles may be lost and the country subjugated by a foreign power.
The rapid transport of troops by sea is a military necessity. It can be accomplished rapidly only by the employment of the national mercantile marine. To operate as an efficient auxiliary to the defense of the nation the merchant marine must be kept always in a state of the highest efficiency; the gross tonnage must be large, and the individual ships speedy and roomy. Three gross tons is reckoned the minimum for the transportation of a soldier and ten gross tons the minimum for a horse. In 1914-15 Germany had 5,090,331 gross tons of steel merchant shipping capable of landing at least 1,000,000 soldiers with adequate supplies on any enemy coast within a brief time. England was far better supplied with transport facilities, having nearly 21,000,000 gross tons. The condition of the United States was negligible. It was not adequate to convey rapidly by sea even the small army necessary for the defense of the Panama Canal or Cuba. A hostile occupation of Cuba by an enemy force might prove fatal to the United States, and, what is more, easy of accomplishment by a great European power at war with America. A merchant marine in time of war is essential for the collection of war material. America procures from Chile most of the sodium nitrate from which is made nitric acid, essential to the manufacture of guncotton and smokeless powder. Perhaps a hundred highly desirable articles for war material, not all of them indispensable, are derived from foreign countries, and can be conveyed in times of war only in domestic bottoms properly convoyed. In a hundred ways a nation deprived of a mercantile marine by bad laws is placed at a great disadvantage in times of war as in times of peace.
In 1865 American deep-water tonnage carried seventy per cent, of its exports and sixty-five per cent, of its imports. But in 1914 almost all the exports and imports of America were carried by foreigners, who thrived with the profits paid to them by the American producers. Thus the millions of freight moneys which should have found their way into American banks were deposited in London and Berlin.
After the war, if America would remain at a high stage of national efficiency, the present laws affecting its merchant marine must be speedily altered. There is doubtless in America a popular disapproval of bounties and subsidies to American shipmasters. This spirit, correct in the abstract, is much perverted and encouraged by demagogic politicians, who prefer to waste the public moneys in grossly extravagant expenditures more directly profitable to themselves or their constituents. A well-directed campaign of education may be necessary to prove to the people of the interior of America that a great merchant marine is essential to their protection and to the prosperity of the whole nation. Americans learn quickly, and they can be made to unlearn as quickly, if desired. When they come to perceive that the nation can be neither strong nor highly prosperous without a merchant marine, they will readily consent to all measures necessary for the upbuilding and the maintenance of American shipping.
The merchant marines of all the great powers have been built and maintained by bounties, favorable discounts, or subsides. The greater European governments are most liberal to their ship-owners and to the national shipping interests generally. This policy is not animated by a desire to favor ship-owners, qua ship-owners, but to strengthen and fortify the whole nation. England has led the way in the development of English shipping by liberal subventions or bounties to English ships built on certain lines and convertible into armed cruisers. The English Government has not hesitated to make large advances of the public funds to English companies engaged in the business of overseas transportation. English postal subsidies to the fast English steamship lines are most liberal. In fact, the whole scheme of the law of England is designed to foster foreign commerce in English-built ships. Germany, France, and Japan all subsidize in one way and another the ships under their flags. They recognize by their laws the fundamental importance of sea-borne commerce under the national flag. The time has come when America must do the same or grow weaker and weaker as a power.
If American ship-builders are at a natural disadvantage, it must be overcome by necessary legislation. If the cost of maintenance of American ships is greater by reason of the greater cost of labor, or because of the unjust demands of labor-unions, then the American Government which tolerates such things must foot the bill in the interest of the whole nation and a determined national policy. Nothing will pay the nation better than large and liberal encouragement to American ship-builders and American ship-owners. Such a policy will in all probability result in the ultimate independence of the ship industries of the country. In the end they will be made self-supporting, for shipmasters always fear to rely on the Government's continuing liberality. They naturally seek to become independent and self-supporting.
Cost the nation what it may, there can be no better investment of the public funds than in the support and maintenance of the American mercantile marine. When stately American ships cover every sea, when ocean greyhounds, American bred, carry Americans more swiftly and safely than the mail-boats of other nations; when the American flag floats proudly in every foreign port, then, and not until then, will America be a supremely great power. May that day speedily come!